


What Was Built Between Us

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Iron Man - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: ? - Freeform, Angst, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Civil War, Depression, Fix-It, Happy Ending, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Not Canon Compliant, entirely, sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-07-10 08:22:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6975307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony is struggling after Steve leaves, he won't admit it, but he is. And the phone he left sits there begging him to call the man, telling him to dial his number. Throw everything away and run after him.</p><p>But all he really wants is to hear Steve's voice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Was Built Between Us

**Author's Note:**

> So not entirely canon-compliant in that Bruce didn't leave at the end of Ultron, although it doesn't affect the plot all that much. And the Avengers all live together in the tower.

In the days after their fight Tony holes himself up in his workshop. In his room. In the bathroom. Anywhere there’s a lock and no easy access to his liquor cabinet.

And God does he want a drink. But he’s been sober so long. Too long to fuck this up now. He was sober through all the fighting. Has been sober since before Extremis. Through all the stress and near-death experiences and the onset of his panic attacks. He’s kept himself sober through everything.

But the thought of Steve not being there beside him when he wakes up makes him want to drink enough vodka to kill him in a single night.

Because this aching in his chest feels like someone’s ripping it open.

A feeling he’s all too familiar with.

The phone Steve left him sits in his pocket. The first day it’s given to him he doesn’t want to look at it. It feels like a broken attempt at an apology. A pathetic endeavour to patch up their burnt down bridge with nothing stronger than sticky tape.

That first night he looks down at it, the bulk of it in one hand and the letter in the other.

 _“If you need me,”_ it reads, and the words have never felt so bitter.

And the phone, the phone is just so Steve. It’s small, but it’s bulky. An old little flip phone. Plain and simple, there’s nothing of importance about it. The wallpaper is still the default one straight from the shop, there are no apps or programs that aren’t standard for a phone like this. The only thing that sets it apart is the single phone number plugged into the contacts with Steve’s name next to it.

And the weirdest thing is Tony’s upset that it’s labelled ‘Steve’, because it sounds too personal.

Days pass after this, weeks, a month. He doesn’t call, but neither does Steve. They’re both doing this silent little dance where they each wait for the other forever.

The phone never leaves Tony’s pocket. It’s always there, buried right next to his own phone. The two pressed together in an odd combination of past and future. And every time one goes off he hopes its Steve’s.

It never is.

And all at once the phone feels too heavy, like it’s pulling him towards the earth or towards that bottle of scotch that sits by his bed. And he hates it. Hates it like he’s never hated anything in his entire life. Two months without Steve, without a word or a whisper and Tony’s stuck watching old security tapes of him on repeat just so he’ll remember what his voice sounds like.

Tony feels heavy. He wakes up one morning and he can’t get out of bed. His legs won’t move and his chest feels like Thor’s left his hammer sitting atop it but there’s nothing there. It’s just Tony in a bed that’s too large and he can’t get up.

So he spends the day in bed.

That one and the next.

And the next.

And the next.

And he realises this isn’t healthy, but it isn’t until Bruce knocks gently on the door and let’s himself in that Tony sees a problem. When the stocky scientist shambles in and tells him he’s worried, that he should eat something, get out.

So he does.

He gets out of bed, throws on something clean and heads into the kitchen. But all the food looks ominous and the liquor cabinet is too close by so he settles on coffee before retreating into the workshop.

And he realises that Bruce means he should be outside or out with friends, not moving his lockdown from one room to another. But Tony can’t seem to bring himself to care.

He throws himself into his work. The same way he always does when he’s trying to avoid the real problem. When he doesn’t know how to fix a situation or himself, so he focuses on what he can fix. And the tangible problems in front of him that he can touch and feel and tinker with.

He makes four scientific break throughs in a week. Releases plans for seven new products and designs three more Iron Man suits. The media buzzes with his achievements, and he thinks he might have let himself be swept away by the buzz if he hadn’t seen the disapproval on Bruce’s face.

After that building doesn’t make the heavy feeling go away. And he loses all motivation to so much as read over a blueprint. His genius comes to a grinding halt and he can’t seem to pick himself up off the couch in his workshop.

Back to square one.

But at least he doesn’t drink. 

Not a drop. He has Jarvis lockdown all the cabinets and cupboards with alcohol in them. Lock all the rooms where there are bottles left out on display. Neither he nor the other Avengers can so much as stand next to a bottle of booze. Which he gets some complaints about, but no one really fights him on it. They know why he’s doing it.

Without any Bourbon or Whiskey within reach Tony instead drowns himself in coffee. He drinks enough to have him bouncing off the walls, and then enough to make the room teeter dangerously, and then enough that he’s throwing it all up.

He doesn’t eat, he’s lost weight. His only sustenance now is caffeine and somehow he’s convinced himself that that’s better than alcohol. If only marginally.

One night Tony dreams about Steve. He dreams that he’s standing over him; shield raised as he prepares to slam it into Tony’s chest and all he can think about is how Steve will hate himself if he kills him. When suddenly their roles are reversed and Tony’s straddling Steve’s waist and there’s a hole burnt through the blonde’s chest from his repulsors.

He wakes up screaming and unable to breathe, but this time Steve isn’t there to help.

He makes it four months without wanting to call Steve. Four months before he finds himself throwing the phone into a box so Jarvis can keep it locked out of his reach and he won’t, he won’t call Steve.

His has given enough to this man, this man he loved and probably still loves around all the hurt. This man Tony has woken up to the sight of every morning for a year. This man he’s treasured and loved and tried to do right by for so long.

And he feels sick thinking about him. Thinking about all this happiness and joy he brought to his life. About all these little things they’ve shared, all these little moments and tiny gestures and comfortable routines. All the lazy afternoons and morning kisses and forced lunches. The movies on the couch, eating Thai on Wednesdays, sparring in the gym. The sight of Captain America shaving in the mornings, the tiny cluster of freckles on his shoulder blade, the coil of muscle wound tight in his abdomen. The sparkle in his eye when Tony shows him a new movie, the confusion when someone makes reference to something he hasn’t learnt about yet, the feeling of his lips pressed into Tony’s skin.

Thinking about it leaves him feeling violated and nauseous and he locks himself in the bathroom. Sitting in the corner of the bathtub so he can press his forehead to the cool tiles that run along the wall. And he doesn’t know when it starts, doesn’t remember when the tears began rolling lazily down his cheeks, but they do. And by the time he notices them he’s winded and sobbing and his chest is rattling with the force of it.

He cries until he throws up and then cries again. And it’s the most productive thing he’s done in a month.

He reaches the six month milestone and he’s working again. Really working. He’s going to all his meetings and pulling out projects by the deadline and keeping himself in check. He eats three meals a day and runs laps around the gym and gets out of the house.

He visits Peter semi-often. Talks to the kid about science and technology and college. Brings him a new laptop and bedazzles his suit and asks him about his day.

At one point Peter tells him he doesn’t need to replace his dad, and the statement is so strange it takes him a moment to realise this was the kind of thing father’s do.

He gets home that evening and pulls out some of Howard’s old things. Photographs and documents and an album of himself as a child where each photograph is at least a year apart. It’s the only thing he can really find that has anything to do with his childhood, but he doubts Howard really knew it existed. And while he’s sorting through it all he finds his dad’s old flask with his initials carved into the bottom.

And the flask isn’t empty.

He tells himself it’s just a sip, just to see if it’s spoiled. And the sip turns into two, then three, and then he’s gulping down the Brandy like it’s air and the flask is empty. And the burn of it in his throat makes him hate himself more than he ever thought he could. More than he ever has before.

He falls asleep right there on the floor, surrounded by his father’s memorabilia, with a flask in one hand.

When he wakes up he’s got a headache, something he decides he can remedy with a small glass of Scotch. Only he finishes the glass, and then the bottle. So he moves on to Whiskey, is halfway through the bottle when Natasha is walking into the kitchen.

He smiles at her, and he thinks it might be the first time he’s smiled in six months.

She smacks him hard across the face and he drops the bottle, it shatters on the floor by his feet and they’re mangled by the glass fragments, burying themselves into the tender flesh. She’s yelling at him but he barely hears it, barely registers the presence of the others in the room as they come to investigate the commotion. He leans down to collect the glass with his bare hands. And his feet are bleeding, stinging with the alcohol. And his hands are bleeding too because he squeezes he shards too tight in his palm as though afraid he’ll drop them otherwise.

And he just might, because he’s shaking so hard he has trouble keeping his balance. Natasha kneels in front of him and he thinks she’s stopped yelling, he can’t really tell, her hands are on his and she’s trying to make him let go of the glass. Trying to get him to stand so she can hurry him off to the hospital where they’ll bandage his feet and tell him he’s okay even though he’s not.

Seven months comes around with a bang. He drinks almost daily now, tries to do it in secret, but really nothing’s private when he lives in a house full of superheroes.

Because that’s what they are. What he is. A superhero.

So when some maniacal supervillain decides she’s going to try and blow up Auckland, it means Tony needs to make a trip down to New Zealand, which is a lot more difficult when he’s trying to pilot the suit with a hangover. And he wonders momentarily if he should’ve had a drink before he left.

The fight doesn’t last long, the woman is ridiculously over-powered but her stamina can’t hold out as long as an Avenger. When she’s out of energy and can’t keep manifesting fireballs to shoot at the team she holes herself up in the hospital she’d taken hostage. Surrounded by enough weapons and explosives to destroy the whole neighbourhood.

And Tony wants to storm in there, to wreak havoc and force her out whether she blows the place or not. But the Avengers sit on dangerous ground right now, and he doesn’t want to be the quake that makes the tower fall.

There’s negotiating and talking as they try to bargain with her, but she’s a madwoman and everything flies over her head. She says she wants her husband, but he’s either a ghost or a figment of her imagination because she’s never been married. And she’s screaming like it’ll bring him to life in front of her while she wave a gun at a young male nurse, and the man looks about ready to pass out or piss himself or both.

They’re there for hours, just listening to her scream and cry while they try to figure out what to do and she goes quiet. And for a moment there’s nothing until gunshots ring in the air and Tony’s not thinking and he’s flying up the third story where she’s trapped herself and the next thing he knows something comes sailing off the balcony and into his chest plate.

And that’s all he remembers.

When he wakes up they tell him the woman killed the nurse. She shot him when he tried to escape and then threw an explosive at the waiting police squad down below, but that Tony had shielded them from the blast.

The suit was wrecked, but he was alive. He had an impressive new scar on his hip and bruises everywhere and the doctors tell him he’ll be fine with a little rest.

And he’ll blame the painkillers at a later date. Swear up and down that it was the drugs talking. Because he cries at this new scar Steve has never seen and may never see, and he tells the doctors he wants to die.

After that the team takes shifts on Tony-sitting duty. They think he’s suicidal, think he’ll try to throw himself out the tower window or hang himself with a cord down in the workshop. He can’t drink as liberally now, which he thinks he’s grateful for but it’s hard to tell around the feeling of complete hopelessness that’s settled into his bones and follows him around like a shadow.

The team is smaller now; there are only five of them. And Tony was supposed to have given up his life as an Avenger. It was Steve who convinced him to stay, which is weird to think about now, because it turns out he wasn’t the one who left.

It doesn’t take long for the media to catch on to the fact that Tony isn’t coping. Especially after a fiasco where he threatened to push a board member out of a seventh story window in a meeting. Someone leaks that he’s drinking, or someone makes it up and it happens to be true. And time rolls by with one mishap after another until he coughs up blood at a press conference.

The doctor tells him its stress. He’s a little disappointed he’s not dying. 

Month nine rolls around and Tony has a little of his freedom back. The others still check up on him, but he’s not being babysat anymore, which makes drinking a lot easier. He doesn’t have to work either; he’s taken a ‘vacation’ while he’s ‘recuperating’.

To celebrate the occasion he decides to get plastered. Which is mistake one.

Mistake two was leaving Steve’s flip phone within reach.

Because he’s drunk and vulnerable and he feels unbearably lonely. So hugs his last bottle of booze and flicks the screen open. Dialling the number, but before it can start ringing he’s hung up. And he’s crying again. Which is something he seems to do a lot more of lately.

When the tears subside he steels himself with another large swig of whatever he has in his hand and dials again.

The phone rings once.

Twice.

And then Steve’s picking up and Tony’s hearing his voice for the first time in what feels like years and he might just start crying again.

“Tony? What’s wrong? What’s the emergency?”

Which makes him feel stupid, because the number was for emergencies; he was supposed to use it in an emergency. Not because he wants to jump of a bridge.

“Tony?” Steve says again, with a sliver of panic.

“Sorry. There-” he has to clear his throat, voice shaky, “There is no emergency.”

A pause, “Why did you call?”

I want to die.

“I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Tony-”

“I’m not. I’m not asking you to come back. I think I’m still too angry to ask for that. But it’s been nine months and I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Are you drunk? You’re slurring a-” he sounds angry, or sad, Tony can’t tell.

“Fucking hammered Steve,” but the name catches on his tongue and he has to take another swig to wash the word down, “Haven’t you heard. I’ve gone off the rails.”

“Tony, are you- Did you really-”

But Tony just isn’t letting the man speak, because he wanted to hear his voice but the sound of it is making him feel sick, “Yes, probably yes. I’m a wreck Steve. Not that you’d know. Or care. Or maybe you do. But I’m not sure I want you to.”

“I care.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

“Stop. Steve please just stop. You can’t- You can’t just decide to have a foot either side of the door. You can’t just call and tell me you care about me and not be here because the two things don’t go together. You’re either here or you’re not and that’s the truth of it.”

“You called me.”

“I know.”

“I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You meant to lie.”

“I thought I was- I’m sorry.”

“Don’t tell me that when I can’t see you,” and it was supposed to be malicious, a bite at Steve’s attempt to apologise, but his voice barely rises above a whisper and it sounds fragile, so fragile.

There’s a silence that stretches between them after that. It’s filled with unspoken words and apologies and promises of love that neither of them hears. But it fills the void between them for a moment and builds a bridge across the miles that separate them. Broken by the sound of Tony tipping back more drink.

“Tony-”

“Stop! Jesus, is my name the only thing you can say?! You’re like a broken record!” he’s shouting, screaming almost, and his eyes feel hot with tears that threaten to flood out but he won’t, he can’t cry.

“To- Are you okay? You’re- I’ve been watching the news, and Nat said-”

“What? Nat? You’ve been talking to Natasha? You could talk to her but not me?”

“That’s not- I thought you needed space. We didn’t exactly part on great terms.”

“Which is why you should have called! What- I’ve- I couldn’t get out of bed! I didn’t- I wasn’t eating! Or sleeping! And I kept thinking if I just waited you’d call, or show up at the tower or something! Steve I didn’t even know if you were okay! You were- I-” but his speech meanders of into incomprehensible slurring and rapid breaths that might have meant he was crying if he weren’t fighting back tears so furiously.

“Don’t- Don’t cry. I’m-”

“I’m not crying.”

“How are you feeling? Now, I mean. I heard you’re on break but you keep up to date. And you’ve been visiting Peter.”

And for some reason it stings to hear that Steve has been following his life so closely, when he doesn’t know what the blonde has been doing at all for the past nine months. He nods when Steve mentions Peter, but he’s too drunk to feel stupid about the action. Leaning back so he can rest his head against the wall.

“I feel like shit, Steve.”

“Drinking won’t help.”

“ _God_ , don’t you think I know that! I do Steve, I know! I had Jarvis lock down everything for six months so I wouldn’t even feel tempted! Why the fuck do you think I was sober for so long?! Because I wanted to impress you?! I was sober because my old man was a drunk and my mum was a drunk and I was a drunk and I didn’t want to die like that! I was sober before you! I was sober for six months after you! And when I did drink I hated it! I hated myself for it! But the only thing I could think about was you and how much I missed you and how much you’d disapprove! Jesus, Steve! You think I just woke up one morning and decided to flush all my hard work down the drain?!”

“Tony, I’m-”

“You keep doing that. You’re talking to me but you’re not really saying anything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I shouldn’t have called.”

“No! Don’t- Don’t hang up. Please.”

“I feel like I’m the only one busting my balls over this phone call. It doesn’t feel like you really want to be here.”

“I do, Tony, I do. I really do. I just- I don’t know what to say. What happened. The things we did to each other, the things we said. They’re still so fresh. And it feels like if I try to talk about any one thing I might cry.”

And that’s a confession he never thought he’d hear come from Steve Rogers.

“Tell me what to say,” Steve speaks again, so earnest.

“Tell me you love me.”

“Tony. Tony, I love you, please- Don’t- I didn’t want this to-”

“Shut up Steve. I love you.”

“Do you?”

“I think so.”

Steve laughs, but it sounds defeated, “I expected a no, so I guess this is a little better.”

“There were a lot of things I wanted to say to you when I called, but I can’t really remember what they were now.”

“I can wait until you remember.”

And those words only remind him of Bucky.

“You didn’t tell me. You knew, and you didn’t tell me. If- If you’d let me know. If it had been _you_ who let me know instead of watching it on some stupid video this would have been different.”

“You can’t say you wouldn’t have been angry.”

“I’m not saying I wouldn’t be angry. But finding out like that, after all the shit that was already going on, that was the breaking point. If you’d just- I would have understood. Yeah I’d be angry, furious; I probably wouldn’t have spoken to you for weeks. But there’s a reason people call me a genius. I know none of this was Bu- Was his fault. And I would have realised that back then as well. And I would have helped you. Before the accords, before being an Avenger. I would have helped you as your friend.”

Steve doesn’t say anything, the silence stretches from odd to uncomfortable very quickly and Tony realises every muscle in his body is wound so tight he might snap in half.

“I don’t mean to make you feel guilty,” he continues, “That- That wasn’t my intention.”

“I felt guilty before the phone call Tony.”

“Please don’t.”

“How? How can I not when I had every opportunity to stop this. Every opportunity to make a different choice, to change the outcome. I was- I am an idiot. And I hurt you, Tony. I never- I told myself I would never and I did.”

“I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”

“I know.”

“I hurt you too.”

“I know.”

“I think- I think we really fucked up. And I think _we’re_ really fucked up. Which is why we can never sort out our shit. And why we fight, even about little things. You can be stubborn, and bull-headed and blind. But I’m exactly the same. And I love you Steve, loved you, I don’t know,” he takes a breath, Steve doesn’t interrupt him, “But I think I learnt something when I was dating Pepper. That I’m attracted to good people I can see flaws in. My own flaws in. And sometimes those flaws end up overwhelming me because I see myself in the people I love. And I see myself destroying the people I love. Inside and out.”

“You didn’t destroy me.”

“I think I destroyed what we had.”

“I think we can fix it.”

“Do you?”

“No.”

He nods, swallows hard and tries to blink back tears that well up in the corners of his eyes. But they fall anyway.

“But maybe we can have something different. I still love you Tony, I still want to love you. And I want us to build this again. Not the same, not with a clean slate. But I want to try.”

“We might break it again.”

“Then we’ll build something new.”

“I don’t know if I can do this.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to.”

“Then we should try. You’re very good at building things Tony. I know it, so do you. So help me build this between us.”

“I can’t. Not right now.”

“I’ll wait.”

“What if I never can?”

“Then I’ll walk away. This isn’t something I want to force. If we try and force it there will be cracks and seams and it’ll break. I want something strong with you. Something we can be proud of.”

“We had that before.”

“I know.”

“I think. I think I’m going to hang up now.”

Steve makes a noise like he wants to protest but he doesn’t, there’s a shuffling and Tony thinks he might be nodding.

“Alright. You can- You can call me any time.”

“I know. So can you.”

“I miss you Tony.”

“Yeah. I miss you too.”

“I love you.”

“I know. I- I’ll call you later. Maybe.”

And he hangs up. Because he doesn’t want to hear what else Steve has to say and the silent crying is slowly building itself into a breakdown he really didn’t want to have over the phone.

But God Tony misses him, he really does. He misses the Steve Rogers he fell in love with, he’s just not sure that was the same man he’d been talking to on the phone.

And he’d hated the endearment before, had felt it tacky and old, but all he wants is for Steve to wrap him in his arms and call him darling while he cries into his shirt. He wants to kiss his stupid face and run his fingers through his hair and tell him he loves him and mean it.

He finishes the bottle, downs it all in one go and curls up on the floor. His face is wet, he’s crying like he’s five and his dad won’t help him make a circuit board. He falls asleep like that. Cold and drunk and crying. And when he wakes up he takes every bottle of alcohol in the house, every hidden stash and nightstand selection and he throws it all away.

He doesn’t call Steve again, not for months, and Steve doesn’t call him either.

They’re still broken. Still no good, but they talk, and they don’t shout and Tony’s sober. He still thinks he wants to kill himself, he’s not exactly sure, but he won’t. Not because he’s cured by love or because he’s holding on for Steve. Tony is just stubborn, and he should have died years ago in a cave in Afghanistan but he didn’t. And the man who saved him then had told him not to waste his life.

And he wants to see where things go from here. He wants to see what he and Steve will build this time. Because he loves him, he does, and he doesn’t doubt that Steve feels the same. But they say you never love the same way twice. And they both came out of this different people, who will love differently to the way Steve Rogers and Tony Stark loved each other.

But Tony is a builder. And he will build this between them until it towers above them and overflows and people will marvel at it. They’ll look at it and they’ll know it was built for two people and two people alone. It will be beautiful and private and theirs.

Two strange, damaged, wonderful people. Who hated and loved and fell apart and loved again.


End file.
